


Write Drunk, Edit Never

by ThereBeWhalesHere



Category: Original Work
Genre: Flash Fiction, Multi, Other, timed writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-30 07:51:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12104115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereBeWhalesHere/pseuds/ThereBeWhalesHere
Summary: My 15-minute responses to various prompts, just flash fiction, mostly unedited and pretty raw. Please read the notes before each piece for the prompt and trigger warnings! (Also feel free to poach these prompts. I typically like them!)





	1. CSI

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Taylor’s eyes narrowed. I tensed. “Don’t go there,” I told myself.
> 
> Trigger warnings: violence, vomit, inference of domestic abuse

 

Taylor’s eyes narrowed, and Lydia tensed.  _ Don’t go there _ , she urged herself, her heart trying to break itself against her ribcage and her fingernails digging crescents into her palms. To dig this up, she would have to perform social archeology, she would have to dust and uncover artifacts of their shared past, moments they’d both buried-- and for damn good reasons. To dig this up, she would have to open herself up to criticism and scrutiny, to present herself and all her findings, to defend her conclusions to the only person who had a hope of striking them down.  _ Don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t go there _ ...

 

But Lydia had never been good at following her own advice.

 

“If you had just kept your mouth shut,” she spat, tension stretched between each word as though they were warring with each other, each syllable tugging selfishly at her lips and tongue, “none of this would have happened.”

 

And he still wore that smile, that stupid, dumbfounded little smile that never quite faded, that stupid, dumbfounded smile that, when his lips parted, made his teeth shine in the moonlight that shone through the plastic taped to the gaping maw of the windows, fluttering in the nighttime breeze.

 

“What are you talking about?” he asked as though he didn’t know, and Lydia threw her hands in the air. She stepped away, mindful of the puddle, terrified of leaving a print,  a corner of her shoe, a fiber, a hair. She’d seen CSI, goddamnit.

 

“You!” She shouted, and the reality of their situation hit her like a bus, slamming into her gut and knocking the air from her, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe, didn’t know how to breathe, her lungs tight and hard and constricting and curling themselves around her heart. She gasped, doubled over, and gagged. She couldn’t vomit, couldn’t leave anything that was her here. They had to go. They had to run. 

 

They had to run together if they were going to survive this.

 

When Taylor’s hand laid itself along her spine, she whirled around, slapping him away, conscious of the fact that he could break her neck and slam her head on the concrete just as easily as he’d done the same to the body that lay at their feet, but Taylor would never do that to her. They were in this together. In everything together. 

 

Tears stung her eyes and she knelt clutching herself. “If you’d just kept your mouth shut,” she said again, defeated this time, feeling the sob in the back of her throat that wanted to break through and forcing it back. “He never had to know, you know. He could have… he could have…”

 

But what could he have done? Gabe could have gone his whole life without knowing, but what would that have accomplished? He’d still be the same dick, the same hard-handed, spiteful asshole who had gripped Lydia’s arm and--

 

Maybe this was inevitable after all.


	2. The Ex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I didn’t know my ex was even invited to the party. Things did not get too awkward until the host insisted we meet each other.
> 
> Trigger warnings: alcohol, and I think that's it? And sex mention, I guess. A lot of these will mention sex. Also there's at least two of these prompts about lesbians breaking up. Girl gotta make her own drama, I guess.

I saw Lucy everywhere, so really, this wasn’t new. After we broke up, or, rather, after she decided to pack her scant possessions in an old microwave box and move to San Francisco with the girl who worked the counter at Quiznos, I saw Lucy in every store window, in every passing car, in every girl I took to bed and every girl I thought about taking to bed, and so,  _ really  _ this wasn’t new.

Except this time, when I blinked, refocused my eyes, she didn’t go away. She stood, in fact, off to the side of the room, a can of PBR in her hand, nails tipped with black like she was the first one to play with the colors on a french tip. She wore a shirt that I could swear I bought for her, or maybe it used to be mine, a low-cut black tanktop with the words “no one knows I’m queer” printed boldly across its length. In the tears of her jeans-- god, she still had those jeans?-- I saw that same honey skin I used to press open-mouthed kisses against as we lay curled on our mattress on the floor of our shitty apartment, tangled in mismatched sheets from our old dorm room, stitched together in the middle to make it stretch. 

But we never needed that extra length, we’d lay curled together at night no matter how hot it got-- and our apartment was always hot-- humid and thick with the scent of us, and our vanilla candles, and our cat, and the frozen pizza we’d cook up for date night.

And here I was, standing dumbstruck across a room from her, wondering who I needed to eviscerate for inviting her. This was Alex’s party. Alex knew me. He knew us. He’d come over to watch old Marilyn Monroe movies with me when Lucy had first left, let me cry into the frayed hem of his T-shirt. He’d played wingman the last year and a half, helping me track down what few single lesbians and bi girls remained in our insular scene. He would never have allowed Lucy here.

“Abby!” And there he was now, his voice deeper than it had been last time I saw him, his beard finally growing in. He slapped me hard on the back and I choked a little bit, beer sloshing over my fingers. 

“Alex,” I said, but it was more warning than greeting. “What the fuck is she doing here.”

It was a question, but it ended with a period. 

“Who?” he asked.

“Lucy,” I hissed, tugging him by his arm and turning him just in case she happened to look our way, just in case she noticed me, though she’d recognize me blind-- I knew she would.

“What, your ex? She’s in the city, Abs, you know that.”

I turned, yanking him back around by his sleeve, holding out my beer the way I’d hold an accusatory finger. “Then who the hell is that?”

He looked at her, then at me. “Abs, that’s Georgia.”

Okay, I knew the name Georgia. In fact, the name ‘Georgia’ was the reason I was here. He’d lured me here with the promise of a girl-- easiest way to get me anywhere, really-- and he’d said she was new in town. “Just your type,” he’d promised.

Just my type. 

And as she turned around, and Alex caught her eye with a wave, I realized her eyes were all wrong, darker than I remembered, her lips too thin, her jaw round, her skin pockmarked with acne scars. She wasn’t Lucy, but god-- she could have been. In another life, she could have been.


	3. Cell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: For what possible reason was there a cellphone ringing on the kitchen counter?
> 
> Trigger warnings: Injury, alcohol, death (ish)

When consciousness returned to me, it came in pieces. First, the physical sensations. Twines of carpet fibers pressed painfully into my cheek, against my temple, against the arm that lay limp and tingling beneath me. An ache in my shoulder where I’d been laying awkwardly on my side, an ache in my stiff legs, which throbbed unresponsive and heavy, as I attempted to move them. Then, sight. I blinked myself into the cool white light of morning, filtering in through those tall glass doors that led to my balcony. And it was my balcony, sure as the carpet was my carpet and the couch in my periphery was my couch and the stain that stood out against the white mere inches from my face was my wine from six weeks previous that I just hadn’t tried all that hard to scrub out.

Bleach, I thought, I should use bleach. No, no, dawn soap, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and hot water. That was the miracle solution. Yes, okay, when I could stand, I’d do that. I’d scrub out that stain.

When I could stand.

The next thing I noticed was the throbbing in my skull. It came on all at once, as though it had been waiting all morning for me to notice it, a steady pulse like a heady bassline that beat and beat and beat and it took me far too long to realize that it was my heartbeat it pulsed in time to, and not the music.

The music.

There was music.

And suddenly my world came rushing back to me, the empty apartment where I lay still as death, the understanding that something had happened to me, and the music.

Mozart, I thought. Or, no, maybe Beethoven. God, who could tell the difference, it was all pianos and violins to me. 

Groaning, I lifted myself up on my hands, the numb one barely holding my weight, and managed to pull my head around as if steering a vessel, heavy and slow and pushing against a current that tried to moor me.

And I looked toward the sound, where a phone lay on the counter of my little kitchenette, buzzing and blaring that pretentious classical nonsense that would’ve given me a headache if I didn’t already have a killer of one.

And just as I focused my eyes on it, recognized it as Not My Phone, it stopped.

I pulled myself up, clutching the back of my skull where I could feel the hard lump of injury rising under my hair, and it started back up again.

It was as though a conductor had just raised his wand to an entire orchestra in this tiny room, the sound cutting through my pain like a knife through butter, and I groaned again, frustrated this time more than anything.

I staggered over to the counter, leaning heavily on my elbows and knocking the stool out of the way. I scrambled for the phone and tried to make my eyes focus on the screen and the light was so bright it burned and it kept buzzing against my fingers and when finally my poor battered brain remembered how to read I saw the name of someone who hadn’t called me in eight years. Someone who couldn’t have called me unless they’d buried her with her pink RAZR flipphone.

And finally the events of last night returned to me in startling clarity.


	4. Stella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I double checked the address this was the place. The sign over the window still read "Stella's Good Time Laundromat and Travel Agency."
> 
> Trigger warnings: religion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This checks in with a couple characters I actually created doing some of these prompts. It's an apartment manager (Duncan) and the priest who moved into the upstairs apartment in order to exorcise its demons. They end up becoming friends, and eventually fall in love and discover proof of the paranormal. I hope to write their full story someday! (This one's a little shitty, but I love Duncan and The Priest so much I decided to just post it.)

Duncan supposed he could have asked the priest why he’d asked to meet here, of all places. But, he could have asked the priest a lot of things. It didn’t mean he’d answer. Since the man had come to live in Duncan’s apartment complex, he had done little but leave cryptic notes under Duncan’s door, with specific instructions regarding how to exercise the demons that had made the room the priest now occupied inhabitable for so many years.

And, goddamnit, in spite of everything, all his practicality and common sense, Duncan had followed those instructions, just as he went wherever the priest asked him to go, met him in any strange alley or at any abandoned building, and brought with him whatever strange supplies the priest had asked.

In this case, “Stella’s Good Time Laundromat and Travel Agency.” And, in this case, a bolt of muslin fabric, three yards of red ribbon, and duct tape.

Duncan had once been a businessman. Insurance sales. A respectable position. The fact that he was now the errand boy of a possibly insane man was not lost on him.

And, yet, there was a certain thrill to it, wasn’t there. When Duncan had given up the corporate life and taken on management of that damn apartment, he’d thought it’d just be a simple life. Maintainence, answering complaints, managing people like he enjoyed. He hadn’t expected the priest to come, to turn everything he knew upside down, to make him believe, even for the briefest moments, that there was a world beyond theirs.

He stared up at the storefront, the cracked paint and rusted edges of the sign, the windows clouded with what could only be decades of dust, where the faint outline of washers and dryers stacked like storage boxes were barely visible. At the corners of the windows, masking tape held the torn edges of newspaper, as though many years ago someone had concealed the inside. But that wasn’t his business. And the longer he stood out here with pedestrians striding past and shooting him furtive glances under their sunglasses, the more conspicuous he looked.

He sighed, shifted the weight of the fabric in his arms, tucked the spool of ribbon under his chin, and knocked on the door with his elbow.

And, he waited.

The shadow appeared before the priest did, the outline of his dark shoulders and the outline of his dark robe, merely a silouhette on the other side of the grime-clouded glass, but when the door creaked open and a tired bell sounded for, what Duncan assumed, was the first time in years, the priest looked on him with a fondness in his dark eyes and a slight quirk to his usually straight, thin lips. He stepped aside, and Duncan walked in.

“Okay,” Duncan said, the same way he always did. The first time it was, “okay, I laid the salt along the eastern wall and played Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' for two hours. What next?” Then it had been, “okay, I brought the box of paperclips and the bouquet of daisies, what’s next?”

Now, he wheeled around to face his-- what? Tennent? Boss? Friend? And offered up the burden in his arms. “Okay, I got the fabric, the ribbon and the tape, what next?”

and the priest smiled that enegmatic smile that lit his dark eyes like a candle lit an empty room and pulled at the lines of his face like a river carved out canyons and he clapped Duncan on the shoulder like an expression of pride and he took in a steady breath through his nose.

“Now, my dear,” he said, that deep voice curling around Duncan’s spine and through the network of his nerves, “Now, we speak to Stella.”


	5. The City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post: We had been traveling for four years six months three weeks and two hours with no hope, and then...
> 
> Trigger warnings: none that I can think of! Let me know if I'm wrong!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Shine and Valen. Shine is my treasured OC whom I've had since I was 14 (hence his ridiculous name) and Valen is the giant horned man who someday becomes his boyfriend. (He's got an Irish accent, btw, since the wife and I decided Seralabassi was basically fantasy Ireland so sorry about writing in dialect). Anyway, Shine's a wanderer at heart, so this prompt made me think of him Immediately.

The air made his lungs feel like paper, full of fibrous holes and unable for a moment to hold a breath. Th cords of his muscles screamed and strained at every step, and when he looked to Valen, strong, powerful, optimistic, pillar that he was, Shine saw the same exhaustion he himself felt reflected in those deep green eyes.

“Are ye alright?” Valen asked, an attempt at a smile, even as a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, slipped into the dip between his eyes, and ran down to settle by his nose. It was hard to look at him, to know  that smile was for Shine’s sake. 

“Fine,” Shine said, his own false mask lifting his lips. The summit loomed above them, casting them both in shadow, and his boots slipped on the gravel of the steep slope. He cursed under his breath, and Valen reached out a hand, steadying him by the shoulder.

“Oi, ye need te pace yourself. Why don’t we sit for a second?”

Shine shook off that shovel of a hand, hefting his pack so it laid flat against his back and continuing on. “It’s right there, Valen,” he complained breathily, tossing out his hand in front of them, above them. “It’s right there, and once we get there, once we get there we’ll—we’ll—“ he stopped. What would they do once they got there? Once they crested another summit to find rolling, empty fields before them? What would they do when the sight of the journey ahead chopped at their resolve like firewood? What would they do when proof loomed before them that it was fruitless? That they would never reach the city?

Valen didn’t comment. Shine looked to him, to the hard set of his thin lips, to the determination that drew lines between his wiry brows, and somehow he drew strength from that. Shine had given up so many times in his life. He’d left his family when the responsibility of caring for his mother became too much. He’d run from Areniel when she’d said that life-changing word and asked him to change his life for it, for her. He’d abandoned his last traveling companion when the rains came and the slope grew slick and he knew it was either him or Devon and he chose himself. 

But Valen always inspired him not to give up. So they trudged forward.

And when Shine put his rough hand on the rough stone and forced his tired muscles to lift his thin frame—when Valen, grunting with effort, hoisted himself over that last ledge and the open, biting air of the moutnain’s summit nipped at their cheeks and noses—Shine stared forward. For a while, he thought it must be a mirage.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d wanted something so badly he believed it was true.

Beside him, Valen let out a nasal breath. A laugh,  a sigh, a sob, Shine couldn’t tell. Then that heavy hand clapped Shine between his shoulder blades and the world came rushing back to him, disbelief fading with the undeniable sight ahead.

In the distance, the gilded towers of Seralabassi speared the sky, the morning sunlight casting shadows that stretched for miles along the hills that rolled off toward the coast. If he squinted, and by the gods he squinted, he could swear he saw movement along the streets, could swear he saw the brightly colored fabric of awnings covering the town’s market, could swear he saw life, civilization, their final shot. 

Their last possible chance. 

“Aye, would ye look at that,” Valen mused beside him, his own labored breath cutting the words short, even as a chuckle tumbled out of his lips. “That aint’ much of a walk now, is it?”

Shine couldn’t help himself. He giggled, a laugh that bubbled out of him and shook his shoulders where Valen rested his hand, a laugh that drew tears from the corners of his eyes, and he dropped his pack onto the rock that felt as though it were shifting beneath his feet with the gravity of his own relief. 

“No,” he said, “No, it’s… it’s really not. Is it? I think—“ he paused, taking in another breath, hoping it might fill his lungs this time. “I think maybe we can take a break now.”


	6. Annoucnement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I had told myself over and over that my response to the announcement would be...
> 
> Trigger warnings: sex mention, but I think that's it!

This had been a long time coming, she knew that. It wasn’t as though they had just stopped talking after they’d broken up – or, no, there had been nothing to break after all.  _ After Angela left _ . In fact, Angela had been almost more communicative in this last year than she’d ever been when she was with Margarite, when they’d shared this shitty third-floor apartment, when they’d shared a bed, when they’d shared everything but the most intimate details of themselves. Since they’d called it quits, Angela had called Margie almost every day, laughing over inside jokes Margie had actually forgotten they had, inviting her to dinner (“I’m busy, thanks”) or drinks (terrible idea, don’t drink around her, don’t lose yourself) to plays and art shows and a thousand things Angela had never wanted to do before. And Margie had declined each time because she knew better, really.

She knew very well, by now. Angela had been the most important romance of her lfie – three long years – they’d fucked the night they’d met, moved in together after a week, adopted a goddamned cat, and Angela had only ever called Margie her roommate, only ever touched her on the elbow in public, only ever shot her side-eyed glances when a man approached her at the bar, as if she didn’t know that Margie would ache if she took any of them up on their clumsy flirtation.

Yes, she knew very well by now. She’d only ever been a friend to Angela, and since the girl had packed up her houseplants and vynil figurines and half-completed to-do lists, since Angela had driven off and left Margie next to the “room for rent” sign, stuck crooked in the front lawn, she knew that this was inevitable.

“Margie?”

Angela’s voice sounded almost tentative on the phone, reception crackling like the sparks of Margie’s anger crackled up her spine and she took a deep breath through her nose. She knew this was coming. She knew this was coming. What had she told herself to say?

“Congratulations,” she managed to choke out, her throat tight around the word that seemed to hiss out of her clenched teeth. “That’s… that’s great, Angela. That’s great.”

Angela seemed to sigh on the other end of the phone, and Margie could picture her – one of those oversized Green Day T-Shirts falling off her shoulder, her freshly painted toes separated by foam, her hand resting on the kitchen counter. “It is,” Angela said, something tremulous in her voice. “And, Margie,  I want you to be my maid of honor. I know you haven’t met Mark yet, but you’ll love him, and he already loves you.”

Margie felt her fingers tighten in the hem of her sweater, her lip trembling whether from fury or frustration or agony she couldn’t quite say. “How the hell does Mark know anything about me?”

Her tone may have caught Angela off-guard, because it took a moment for her to answer. Margie felt the silence settle like a fog, so familiar, so reminiscent of those last few weeks when they’d had no idea what to say to each other.

“I’ve told him all about you,” Angela finally said, softly, as though she could see Margie’s expression, the tears about to spill out her eyes.

“ _All_ about me?” Margie challenged, and she felt Angela wince, though she couldn’t see her. She never wanted to see her again.

“I left out… a few things.” 

A few things – the sex? The gentle brush of lips they’d shared under bright moonlight on the apartment’s rooftop, listening to cars fly by and Elton John slipping through radio speakers? The way she’d spent three years in Margie’s bed and then told her – had the _gall_  to tell her – “I’m straight,” as though it had all been a game. Make believe, a long, strange, experiment. A fucking sleepover.

It had never been a game. Margie put her head in her hand, dropped the phone, and let a sob wrench itself from her throat.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: In that moment I felt like I was seven again, and...
> 
> Trigger warnings: All of them? Inferred but not shown or described sexual assault against a minor, inferred but not shown or deacribed incest, graphic violence (not against the minor), post-traumatic stress, sexual abuse, regular abuse, revenge, death... um... I hope that's all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got really dark and I apologize for writing it. Totally won't judge you for skipping it.

In that moment, I felt like I was seven again, and all that rage rose inside me, burning through me like fire, clenching my fists without thought as they’d clenched when I was a child, muddy-kneed and staring up at him and thinking about death without knowing, truly, what it meant. I wanted him to cease to exist. I wanted him to disappear. I wanted him to die, but I wouldn’t have a word for it until Grandma passed the next year.

And now he was looking at me, calm and collected as he always was, sitting behind the desk in his study as though he could just get back to work after this. As if he could watch me walk away, turn to his computer, and pen an email to his assistant. As if anything could be normal after this.

“Do –“ I paused, scraped my dry tongue along my dry lips to buy myself time, tried to count my breath like Dr. Marcie had always told me to do when my temper flared. “Do you – _really_  not understand why I’m upset?”

“No, honey bear,” he said, that nickname rolling off his tongue, sickly sweet on each syllable and I wanted to take that tongue out of his throat, rip it from its root and watch him choke and sputter around the blood, and I—“It was years ago, after all.”

Years ago. “Years ago?” I shouted, though I’d shouted it to myself enough times, gripping my shoulders with clawed hands during every shaking, sobbing panic attack,  wondering why I couldn’t get over it, why I couldn’t’ move on, why I couldn’t just fucking forgive him already. Why I couldn’t just put it behind me.  “It doesn’t matter how many years ago it was, dad,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, counting my breath, counting my breath, counting my breath. “You – you can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

He pushed himself back from his desk, where pictures were stuck between the deep mahogany shine and the pane of glass on top – pictures of us. Mom. Alec. Joseph. Me, in my little yellow dress. I was seven years old when that picture was taken. Seven years old with muddy knees.

“Honey bear,” he said again, and finally stood, his legs creaking with arthritis – a crack of joints that seemed so loud in this little office, the same office he’d kept for decades, just as dusty, just as hot in the humid summer air. And then, he approached, and I felt myself stiffen. “We’ve been pretending for forty years.” His voice was soft, low, gentling me the way one might soothe a horse or a wild dog. “I don’t see why it suddenly matters now.”

And _yes_  I was seven again, my dress torn, my body aching, tears leaking from my eyes as I begged to go back to mommy, and here he was standing before me, telling me it didn’t matter. Telling me to play pretend. “You like playing pretend, don’t you?” he’d asked back then. 

As he reached out to me, to lay an unwelcome hand along my arm, I reached out too, took a pen from the mug by his keyboard, and shoved it as hard as I could into the juncture of throat and collar, that soft spot of wrinkled skin, mottled with liver spots and moles sprouting with wiry black hair, and as the blood spurt like ink from him and I heard a choke that felt so-- so far away, I promised myself that there was no more pretending. Never again. I’d live in this. And god, for the first time since I was seven, _I was living_.


	8. Window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: It was late, it was raining, and my umbrella had a leak. I should have walked on by, however...
> 
> Trigger warnings: religion, but I think that's all!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of Duncan and The Priest. My own personal grumpy old man OTP.

By now, Duncan knew the priest’s tricks. He knew that the priest knew every point of curiosity, everything that might make Duncan play along with his ridiculous schemes, and maybe due to the friendship Duncan had thought they had formed over the  months, he had hoped the priest would not use them.

But as he shuffled past the empty building next to his own, collar upturned to the rain, brow knit against the wind that seemed to choose to blow in his eyes no matter which way he turned his head, he saw the light in the top window, shining through broken glass in a place that hadn’t had electricity in the ten years Duncan had owned the building next door. And somehow he knew the priest would be up there, waiting, knowing without worry that Duncan would arrive because he always did.

_ Not this time _ , Duncan thought with venom, recalling the mold that peeled the wallpaper of the last place they’d “investigated,” recalling the terrible groan that had shaken the house as the priest had lit his candles. No, he’d had enough of this “demonic” this “paranormal” this complete and utter nonsense that had become such a part of his life since the priest moved in it almost felt as though—

It almost felt as though he was incomplete without it. Without the strange errands in the middle of the night, the abandoned buildings and the sideways, enigmatic smile along those dark lips. He paused then, in the middle of the sidewalk, headlights rushing toward him on one side of the street, taillights passing in a red streak on the other, and he glanced back to that window, a single yellow square against the blue-gray-black of night and rain.

And he swore, loudly, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets, and he marched through puddles laying in dips of concrete toward the crumbling stoop of the abandoned apartments. When he found the door locked, he groaned, tossed his head back, and out of habit more than expectation he smashed the buzzer to the apartment above.

A delighted lilt of a voice crackled out of the speaker. “Who is it?” the priest said, and in spite of himself Duncan felt himself smiling.

“You know damn well who it is,” he said gruffly, hunching his shoulders against a gust of wind. “Now what is it this time? Demon, ghost, fairy?”

“I don’t deal in fairies,” the priest reminded him, sing-songing, and Duncan scoffed.

“I know, you sunnovabitch. Just let me in. It’s freezing out here.”

The door buzzed, then clicked, and the voice returned. “See you soon, darling.”

And Duncan didn’t realize he was blushing until the wind stopped whipping his cheeks red.


End file.
